Color image processing systems often include an input device (e.g., a scanner, copy machine, etc), an image manipulation device (e.g., a workstation), and one or more output devices (e.g., monitors, rendering devices, color print presses, etc.). Within such systems, consistency of color reproduction across system components is desirable. It is also desirable to attain similar consistency of color reproduction when image files are transferred between different color image processing systems.
Color bars are rows of small colored squares rendered outside a trim area of a document and employed by a press operator to control ink density, dot gain, color registration, and other image processing attributes. Such color bars may include, for example, samples of a process, overprint, or spot colors, and can be represented in the form of a solid block or in a set of varying tint levels. Color bars can be acquired from a library of digital images, which can be applied to the pages of a job during a prepress operation.
In most prior art approaches, the color bars can be manually selected by an operator based on the color content of a particular job and their placement in the proper location on a page. Such a selection can also take into account the crop and trim areas of the page. A manual process of this type is typically consuming and expensive, and detracts from the usefulness of the utilized automated workflow system.
Based on the foregoing, it is believed that a need exists for an improved system and method for automatically adding a color bar as a rendering job ticket attribute, as described in greater detail herein.